Monday, July 22, 2013

How Fast Can you Get an Online Degree?

One thing that you hear a lot when people start talking about their reasons for getting an online degree is that they seem to think that they can do it much more quickly than they can do a regular degree program. This is usually important to them because they need the degree quickly for career advancement. This does raise the question of just how fast can you get an online degree?

How long it takes to get an online degree is going to depend in large part on how much you already know. There are options that will allow you to get a legitimate degree in a relatively short period of time either through testing or through a portfolio review. There is a site called BA in four weeks that explains how this is possible. Keeping in mind of course that 30 days is an extreme example and very unlikely.

More realistically if you already have most of the knowledge that is necessary for a degree you can probably do it in about a year. If however you need to actually learn the material you should plan on a much longer period to complete your degree. Often it takes longer than a regular degree program takes.

If you are able to devote as much time to your online degree as a full time student does to their degree you can probably finish in about the same amount of time. If you work hard and take self paced classes it may even be possible to do it in a little bit less time. Expecting however that you are going to do what amounts to four years of work in one year in order to get your degree is not realistic, particularly if you already have a job.

One of the biggest reasons that people fail to complete their online degrees is that they get discouraged when things don't go as fast as they had hoped. It is therefore important to make sure that you have realistic expectations of how fast you are going to complete your degree. A fast degree is possible if you are looking to get credit for stuff you already know,usually through your job. It is not very likely however if you need to learn the material from scratch.

2 comments:

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